Raj Agrawal's Blog

How do you explain climate change to a 5-year-old child?

“Grandpa what is climate change?” Alice, my 5-year-old granddaughter asked out of the blue as we were having our dinner, on that warm and muggy August day in Colorado, just outside of Denver.

Of course, the know-it-all grandpa would have a good answer. But I was floored. How do I explain something that we grownups take for granted but is quite foreign to a child. So, after thinking for a few minutes I replied,

“Alice, that is great question. But before I talk about climate change do you know what climate is?” I asked buying some time as she nodded her head from side to side and said,

 “Not really.”

“OK, tell me how it is outside. Hot or cold?”

“It is hot.” Alice said rolling her eyes at the silly question.

“How about in the winter when it is snowing?”

“It is cold, of course.”

“Good, now how is it in Florida when you come to visit us in Christmas?” I asked, sensing her impatience and the need to get to the point.

“It is always hot in Florida, Grandpa. Now, can you talk about climate change?”

“Yes, yes, I will. We are almost there. So, you see Colorado is always hot in summer and cold in winter, year after year. But Florida is always hot – summer and winter, again year after year. So, that is what we call climate – what we expect to happen year after year. And that is different from weather which changes every day and is not always the same. Does that make sense, Alice?” I asked not sure if I got the message across.

“I think it does and I get it.” Alice said looking at me intently and not rolling her eyes anymore.

“Good. Now let us say when you are 15 years old, it is always hot outside in Colorado – in summer and winter. Colorado then becomes more like Florida. What do you think happened to Colorado’s climate? I asked raising my eyebrows.

“It changed.” Alice replied excitedly.

“Exactly, the climate changed, and we grownups gave it a name – Climate Change. Now, I don’t think it is going to change in 10 years and it may take a lot longer, but it could if we did not do something about it.” I said.

“I get it. But what makes the climate change?” Alice was now genuinely interested in the subject and had forgotten to eat her supper.

“You know there are many things that are causing the climate to change but the biggest one is…”

“I know, greenhouse gases. Ms. Johnson talked about it.” Alice almost jumped out of her chair, cutting me off. Ms. Johnson was her homeroom teacher at school.

“Oh, good so I don’t have to tell you about greenhouse gases.” I said.

“But grandpa, I don’t really know what they are and what they do to the climate. Can you tell me?”

“So, Alice, greenhouse gases are a bunch of bad gases that gets put in the air that surrounds our planet. The really bad one is called carbon di-oxide. And these come from all sorts of places. When you breath out, you are actually producing this gas. Also, cars and buses and trucks except for the ones that are electric, make this gas. To keep our house warm in the winter and cool in the summer we run machines that put out this gas. So, you see it is made by people and all sorts of stuff we use in our homes and schools.” I said trying not to be too technical.

“I get it. But what does carbon di-oxide got to do with climate change?” Alice asked proud of herself to pronounce the high-sounding name of the bad gas.

“Good question. So, this bad gas acts like a blanket, and it covers our planet. And just like the blanket does to you when you are feeling cold, it makes our planet nice and warm. Now, you can throw off the blanket when you are feeling hot and feel better. But our planet cannot do that. It just keeps getting hotter and hotter. And guess what would happen to Colorado’s climate if we somehow don’t stop the planet from becoming hot?” I said bringing our conversation back to where we started.

“It will become like Florida, always hot” Alice exclaimed.

“Exactly, the climate of Colorado would no longer be like it is today and will change. This is what we call climate change. It happens slowly and will continue to happen if we don’t do something about it.” I said trying not to sound too pessimistic.

“That’s bad grandpa. What do you think we should do about it?” Alice asked earnestly.

“Actually, Alice it is not that bad if we all do something about it. Let me tell you a few things you and I can do. Don’t waste food, don’t waste water, tell your parents to turn down the heat in winter and A/C in summer, don’t use plastic water bottles that we throw away. You see all of these things take energy which then makes the bad carbon di-oxide gas. So, if all of us did our part, I can tell you we would beat the climate change and not have Colorado become like Florida. Do you understand that Alice?” I asked sounding optimistic and constructive to my little granddaughter.

“Yes, grandpa. I understand and I promise to do my part. I love you, grandpa.” Alce said getting back to finishing her dinner.

“I love you too, my dear.” I said with a smile, not sure how much of what I had said she would remember. But at least now when the grownups talk of climate change it would not be foreign to her and maybe just maybe she would become part of the solution rather than a problem to the existential threat to our planet.

My Three Steps Guide For Inventors

Step 1 – Analyze the problem.

The old adage – invention is mother of necessity is absolutely true. Every invention is aimed at tackling a problem that you observe in your daily life or at your work. Now, it does not necessarily have to be an earth-shattering type of invention – in fact, most of them are not. The earth-shattering ones are very rare – Light bulb by Thomas Edison, Airplanes by the Wright brothers and more recently Personal Computers by Steve Jobs and the Disk Operating System that enabled these computers to become a useful tool by Bill Gates are some of those inventions that fall in the category of earth-shattering inventions.

Most inventions including many of my more than 30 patented inventions are what I would call incremental inventions. For most of my working life, I worked in aero-engine companies where we had to continuously find ways to improve the capabilities of these engines – cut down on the fuel burnt, reduce the size and weight, increase the service life, reduce operating costs and many other metrics to ensure our engines were best in the class and could stand out in the very competitive marketplace. So, as one of the thousands of engineers our job was to look for problems and limitations which prevented us from pushing these very high-tech machines further and come up with imaginative ideas that would help resolve those problems. Of course, not every idea was workable – in fact very few were, but some did bear fruits and turned into patented inventions that nudged the state of the art just a little. You add all those nudges – kind of singles and maybe an occasional double, and you had a winning a run total.

So, go ahead and look around for problem – big or small, and get your brain fired up to thoroughly analyze the problem and begin formulating solutions that you and your cohorts could start working on.

 Step 2 – Start sketching your ideas.

Step 1 should have given you some ideas that you could now begin to sketch out on a piece of paper or on your computer if that is your preferred medium. For me it is always pencil and paper. The sketches – if it is a physical object or information flow diagrams if the problem you are trying to solve requires new software instead of hardware, do not have to be overly detailed at this stage. All you are trying to do is to get your idea(s), hopefully you have more than one, down on that piece of paper or computer screen that you can now stare at and get your neurons and synapses fired up to help you put some flesh on the bones. This is also the stage where, if appropriate, you solicit inputs and feedback from others on your team – recognizing most inventions today are collaborative rather than individualistic efforts. 

And this is also the step where you start thinking about filing a patent, if you believe your invention is worth patenting and the associated costs and efforts that are required to do so. As a reminder, the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) issues patents not just for hardware inventions but also for software which has new and inventive computer programs.

Step 3 – Actualization and Testing

You have now successfully reached the third and final step in getting your invention off the ground. You are now ready to actualize and test to see if your idea actually works and does what it is supposed to do – which is solve the problem that got you started in the first place. This is the step where the proverbial rubber meets the ground and in some ways is the most arduous and challenging step. The Wright brothers spend years and years at Kitty Hawk – with many failures and setbacks in their quest to make their machine fly. Their success was incremental with their airplane just about to fly but not really flying. Each failure taught them something new – and that is the key. In the business of inventions, failures are as important as successes so long as you learnt from them as to what worked and what did not and accounted for those lessons learnt in your next iteration.

So, go ahead and invent away remembering that firstly you must believe in yourself and your idea but most importantly if you want to see your idea translate into reality – you must persevere and persevere and persevere some more. That is what the great inventors of our times have done and that is what you need to do to help doing things better – whatever those things happen to be!

The disintegrating airplane engine

Although no longer in the news, just about two weeks ago the headlines on most of the news channels began with the hair-raising story of engine parts falling from the sky. It happened on a United flight that had just taken off from Denver for Hawaii. It appears one of the engines had disintegrated raining its parts on a swath of residential neighborhood near the airport. Some of these were rather large pieces of metal which hurled down at high speeds and could have caused loss of lives and major damage to the properties where they fell. Fortunately, that did not happen – no one got killed or injured and there were no major damages to the neighborhood residences. The plane made a quick turn around and safely landed back at Denver with no injuries to passengers or crew. United simply rebooked the passengers on another flight. End of story on a good note. Not much of interest to the news media anymore who quickly moved on to the next big sensational story.

So, was it just a matter of luck that even after what looked like a catastrophic engine failure there were no casualties, and everyone safely made it back to Terra Firma? Hardly. Allow me to elaborate, but first let me show you this video from that flight. Just click on the link below:

https://youtu.be/sBxe4cQzUIY

So, what do you see? Yes, the engine has lost a bunch of parts and you can actually see the innards of it. What else? Well, even in that disintegrated and severely damaged stage, the engine is still running with the flame in the combustion chamber still going strong! Scary yes, but to an aircraft engine designer like myself it was a remarkable sight. It was the validation of our FAA mandated requirements that we design aero-engines to withstand catastrophic failures such as these and not completely disintegrate allowing the airplane to be safely brought back to ground.  While we don’t yet know the exact cause of this failure, preliminary reports indicate the large fan that you see in the front of airplane engines might have lost a blade which ejected out as a high-speed projectile, taking part of the fan casing and the cowling that surrounds it. These were the large parts that were discovered in one of the neighborhood houses. The majority of the engine had managed to mostly stay intact.

Now, as a retired Pratt & Whitney engineer I would have liked to say “of course it would stay intact -it is a P&W engine”. But that would not be true.  You see, in order for aero-engines to be certified to the extremely rigorous and stringent FAA requirements, they have to be able to withstand all kind of mechanical and environmental catastrophes. To demonstrate and prove that it indeed would, we have to carry out thousands of hours of testing where all type of foreign objects such as ice, hale, and birds of different sizes – it used to be real but now made of clay, are thrown at the engine while it is running. And even under the barrage of these foreign objects the engine must keep working and producing thrust albeit at somewhat lower levels.

The final series of these foreign object tests include what is called the “Fan Blade Off Test” in which one of the blades is intentionally released from its hub while the engine is operating at full power. The requirement is for it to keep running without disintegrating and remaining mostly intact.

The United flight appears to have demonstrated this in spades in a real-life situation.

So, next time you board a flight just know that the engineers at Pratt & Whitney and yes at other engine companies as well have got your back and their engine will keep on ticking even while taking a catastrophic licking.

A letter from your republican friend and family member

Yes, I am a card-carrying republican who voted for Donald Trump. There I said it and may be as was the case with my granddaughter Emi, I might be the only person you know who is a republican and who has admitted to voting for Trump.

Now, you might wonder why a first-generation brown skinned immigrant from India who fervently believes in climate change, who supports universal health care and who is fully in favor of a minimum living wage would be a republican. Well, I can say it is because I also believe in free enterprise, fair trade and legal immigration but for me the overwhelming reason for being a republican is because I believe in equality and that we are all equal regardless of our gender, sexual orientation, religion, origin of birth and yes our skin color. Confused! Is it not what the democratic party believes in? Well, not really. Please allow me to elaborate and make my case.

The democratic party has taken up the cause of “Black Lives Matter” in the wake of the heinous and tragic acts committed by some bad apples in law enforcement. The party has explicitly or tacitly endorsed the call for special treatment for a segment of the American population based solely on the color of their skin which includes preference in admissions to colleges and universities, allocation of a minimum number of black executives in senior management positions and the boards of those companies. It even extends to such things as TV shows, advertisements, and Hollywood movies where they would like to mandate representation based solely on skin color. This is all in the name of equality and words like social justice, systemic racism, leveling the playing field and other similar clichés.

I have a problem with this whole skin color-based conversations. Was it not Dr. King who in his iconic “I have a dream” speech said,

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!"

Dr. King went on to say,

“I still have a dream, a dream deeply rooted in the American dream – one day this nation will rise up and live up to its creed, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." I have a dream ...

Dr. King gave that speech some sixty years ago when the color of the skin did keep many from attaining their true potential and preferences based on it might have been justified.  But this country has come a long way since Dr. King delivered that speech at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. We have not only had a president who was black but now have a Black/Asian woman as the vice president elect. Many cities, counties, school boards across the land have black and brown leadership. So, I have a problem in buying into the systemic and structural racism dogma and the special treatment demanded in the name of that.

Now, perhaps society and the country need to do more for those who have been left behind. But I fervently believe that it must not be based on the color of the skin of the people who need our help. In my view “All Lives Matter” Black, Brown, Yellow, White, and yes Blue.

I also have a dream. I dream of a day when if a rogue law enforcement officer kills another human being who is begging for his life saying “I cannot breathe” the media would not sensationalize it by stressing on the color of their skins but by the abhorrent actions of a police officer on a civilian whose life they have sworn to protect. I dream of a day when we have the courage to look at those who have been incarcerated and understand and remedy the root cause for it rather than taking the easy way out and laying it on the color of their skin. I dream of a day when we look deeper to understand why a special segment of our fellow citizens are succumbing to this deadly virus – perhaps due to some underlying medical condition like diabetes, hyper tension and obesity and not chalk it up to the color of their skin.

I hope it would not take another sixty years for Dr. Kings dream to come true where the color of our skin does not matter and we feel at home in saying and accepting that “All Lives Matter.” We are not there yet but I am hopeful we will get there. But, until then, Emi, your grandpa will continue to be a card carrying republican and hope someday you would understand why.

But that does not stop me from supporting our new president elect. This is our beautiful and cherished democracy at work. Joe Biden is my president, and I am rooting for him. My ask to you, my friends and family, is that you join me and do the same – no matter which side of the aisle you sit!

Why do passenger planes fly at high altitudes and what does it have to do with the Covid-19 Pandemic?</strong#x3E;

Concorde

Covid - 19 Virus

Have you wondered why when you are travelling from one city to another, your plane first has to climb out to 35000 feet or about 6 miles above the earth’s surface before it reaches cruising altitude where it finally levels out? It then has to come back to earth only this time it is descending down. Seems like a lot of climbing up and down to get from point A to point B. Well there is a good reason for that – to try and find the sweet spot or a balanced state between two opposing forces, sort of what the country and the world is going through right now with the COVID-19 pandemic - keep everything closed to fully contain the virus and let the economy and people’s livelihood suffer or balance it with well controlled and prescribed openings.

            So, what are the two opposing forces for the airplane. They are the total fuel burnt to complete the trip on one side and the power or more correctly the thrust the engine has to produce to complete the mission on the other. We want to minimize both, but Physics comes in the way and we cannot do that simultaneously and hence the need to find a balance, the sweet spot.

            As the altitude increases the air becomes less dense and with that the aerodynamic drag it exerts on the airplane as it travels through it. For the airplane to maintain its speed, engines need to supply a countervailing thrust force that cancels the resistive drag and keeps the airplane cruising at about constant speed, which for most passenger jets today is around 550 miles per hour or in aviation parlance about 0.85 Mach, just a touch below the sound speed. Causally related to thrust is the fuel burn – the higher the thrust the engine has to produce, the more fuel it needs and vice-versa. Thus, flying at higher altitude reduces drag and in turn the amount of fuel burnt.

            So, the next logical question is what limits the altitude? Why would the planes not fly at higher altitudes still? It is because aero engines need air to produce thrust and as the air becomes thinner, good for reducing drag, it also decreases the thrust producing capability of the engine. The engine size thus has to increase to overcome the drag which then increases the amount of fuel it burns – setting up the need to balance between reducing drag and increasing engine size, the sweet spot.

            For most commercial airliners flying at speeds below the sound speed or subsonic, altitudes around 35000 feet comes close to optimum for minimizing the amount of fuel burnt. However, if the airplane speed were to increase to sonic and beyond, as was the case with the only commercial supersonic jet – the Concorde, the optimum altitude increases. Concorde which flew around Mach 2.0, more than twice as fast as the Boeing 747, cruised at altitudes close to 60000 feet. The higher altitude helped reduce the Concorde’s drag but still burnt almost five times as much fuel per person per mile as the 747. That is because drag increases by the square of the airplane speed. So, the drag for the 2 times faster plane would be 4 times higher along with the fuel it consumes. No wonder Concorde was the mode of transport either for the ultra-rich or for those on hefty expense allowance and could not remain economically viable for long.

Finding the balance for an engineering problem was hard but solvable. The search for that illusive sweet spot for the pandemic continues and may be much harder to find given we are dealing with one of the biggest social conundrums of our times which does not follow the well-established laws of motion and thermodynamics.  Let us hope we find that sweet spot for COVID-19 and find it soon…

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</strong#x3E;

Concorde

Covid - 19 Virus

Have you wondered why when you are travelling from one city to another, your plane first has to climb out to 35000 feet or about 6 miles above the earth’s surface before it reaches cruising altitude where it finally levels out? It then has to come back to earth only this time it is descending down. Seems like a lot of climbing up and down to get from point A to point B. Well there is a good reason for that – to try and find the sweet spot or a balanced state between two opposing forces, sort of what the country and the world is going through right now with the COVID-19 pandemic - keep everything closed to fully contain the virus and let the economy and people’s livelihood suffer or balance it with well controlled and prescribed openings.

            So, what are the two opposing forces for the airplane. They are the total fuel burnt to complete the trip on one side and the power or more correctly the thrust the engine has to produce to complete the mission on the other. We want to minimize both, but Physics comes in the way and we cannot do that simultaneously and hence the need to find a balance, the sweet spot.

            As the altitude increases the air becomes less dense and with that the aerodynamic drag it exerts on the airplane as it travels through it. For the airplane to maintain its speed, engines need to supply a countervailing thrust force that cancels the resistive drag and keeps the airplane cruising at about constant speed, which for most passenger jets today is around 550 miles per hour or in aviation parlance about 0.85 Mach, just a touch below the sound speed. Causally related to thrust is the fuel burn – the higher the thrust the engine has to produce, the more fuel it needs and vice-versa. Thus, flying at higher altitude reduces drag and in turn the amount of fuel burnt.

            So, the next logical question is what limits the altitude? Why would the planes not fly at higher altitudes still? It is because aero engines need air to produce thrust and as the air becomes thinner, good for reducing drag, it also decreases the thrust producing capability of the engine. The engine size thus has to increase to overcome the drag which then increases the amount of fuel it burns – setting up the need to balance between reducing drag and increasing engine size, the sweet spot.

            For most commercial airliners flying at speeds below the sound speed or subsonic, altitudes around 35000 feet comes close to optimum for minimizing the amount of fuel burnt. However, if the airplane speed were to increase to sonic and beyond, as was the case with the only commercial supersonic jet – the Concorde, the optimum altitude increases. Concorde which flew around Mach 2.0, more than twice as fast as the Boeing 747, cruised at altitudes close to 60000 feet. The higher altitude helped reduce the Concorde’s drag but still burnt almost five times as much fuel per person per mile as the 747. That is because drag increases by the square of the airplane speed. So, the drag for the 2 times faster plane would be 4 times higher along with the fuel it consumes. No wonder Concorde was the mode of transport either for the ultra-rich or for those on hefty expense allowance and could not remain economically viable for long.

Finding the balance for an engineering problem was hard but solvable. The search for that illusive sweet spot for the pandemic continues and may be much harder to find given we are dealing with one of the biggest social conundrums of our times which does not follow the well-established laws of motion and thermodynamics.  Let us hope we find that sweet spot for COVID-19 and find it soon…

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Diversity – What Am I Missing?

As it is currently understood and perpetuated by society, when someone talks about diversity, they are really talking about racial and gender diversity. In fact, based on this definition, as an Indian with brown skin, I am one of the diverse persons. Good for me, right? But, I have always had problem with this definition. I have often wondered why we have decided to define diversity so narrowly. What about religious diversity or diversity based on height, weight, hair color, sexual orientation, country of origin. To be fully diverse, why stop there. We must also include people of different ages, varying mental and physical abilities and thousands of other attributes that make each one of us humans different than the other. All seven billion of us!

So, why do we define diversity the way we do. I have struggled with this question all my life and would have gone along with it if I felt it was mainly an academic and intellectual debate with no real- life ramifications. But it ceased being that when I was “advised” by my superiors to stop asking too many questions and get with the program. The conversation below is paraphrasing what transpired at one of those “advise” meetings with my boss:

“Raj, I understand you have some questions about diversity and are not fully aligned with the corporations guidelines.” My boss said as he welcomed me in his office.

“Yes, I do.” I said.

“OK, let us hear it.” he said.

I then went on to articulate what had been troubling me about the currently accepted definition of diversity and added, “Now, let me ask you something.” I said.

” OK, I am listening” he said.

“In NBA what is the predominant race of the players?” I asked.

“Why, African Americans of course.” He replied.

“How about NFL?” I continued.

“Mostly African Americans with smattering of Whites.” He said.

“And what about Golf?” I persisted.

“Mostly White.” He answered but clearly getting impatient.

“What is your point?” he asked somewhat annoyingly.

“My point is why don’t we insist on diversity and inclusion in these sports?”

“Because we want to field our best team.” He replied. He was beginning to see where I was going with this but let me continue anyways.

“You mean we don’t want to lower the bar to bring in players who may not be the best but would satisfy the diversity metrics.” I said.

“Of course not.” He replied.

“So, then please tell me why we would not want the best team in our businesses or in our governments or our academic institutions. We operate in a highly competitive high-tech world and it would make sense to me to get the best people on our team. Should not the only criteria that matters in who we bring on board is to get the most qualified person for the job and not be bogged down by some artificial requirement such as diversity. Especially if we have to lower the bar in doing so.” I said passionately.

“I hear you. But if meritocracy was the only criteria, then how are we going to bring in underrepresented segments of our population. Don’t you think it is good for business to reflect the make-up of the population it is serving.” He asked putting forward the arguments I had heard many times before justifying diversity.

“You do that by investing additional resources in training and preparing those underrepresented segments. Certainly not by lowering the bar. If we were hamstrung by having to bring in people who were not the best, slowly but surely we are going to lose our competitive edge against countries like China and India who are not constrained by such requirements. And that is not going to help anyone including those underrepresented segments. We will simply become an also ran country instead of the world’s most technologically advanced nation to which I had immigrated and now proudly and lovingly call it my home.” I said concluding my pitch.

My boss who belonged to the group lowest on the diversity stack – a white male, simply smiled and said, “Raj, I think you need some diversity training.”

I took the training – twice. But still did not get it. In the end the company simply gave up and reassigned me.

But now that I am retired and older and hopefully wiser, I often reflect on that question and keep coming up with the same conclusion – since we are all diverse it does not make sense to use some politically expedient definition of diversity. We should simply get the best people, just like we do for those professional sports teams.

What am I missing?

I would love to hear your views and any help you can provide in locating that missing thought from my cerebellum.

Airplane Engines & How They’re Linked To Recent Boeing 737 Max Troubles

If you are keeping up with the news, I am sure you have heard of all the kerfuffle about the Boeing Max Jets. The entire fleet of these awfully expensive new airliners has been grounded and is now gathering dust somewhere in a desert, much to the chagrin of the airlines that own or lease them.

 You might also have read that the troubles for this new jet are due to an untried and somewhat stealthy device that Boeing has built into these planes unbeknown to many of the pilots who fly them. The device is called MCAS – which stands for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System – a mouthful. There is a good engineering justification for introducing this gizmo for the first time in the upgraded version of this immensely popular and world’s most successful airplane. It had to do with its new engines!

Let me elaborate. But first a quick primer on aero engines. You will notice these engines mostly hanging under the wing although in some of the older models they are attached to the body of the airplane called fuselage. From outside they do not look all that complicated and all you mostly see are their large fans and if you are really looking, may be a cone shaped tail pipe coming out from the back of the oval metal shell that surrounds the fan. The oval shell, incidentally, is called the nacelle.

Now, the aero engines are truly an engineering marvel. Imagine if you will, the power of almost 20 diesel locomotives or 100 V8 car engines packed into the size of a living room couch. It is these engines that make the airplane fly at speeds that are 10 times faster than a car and can carry anywhere between 50 to 500 passengers on a journey that can be up to 12 hours long. And in spite of all the recent troubles reported in the media, the airplanes and the engines that power them are incredibly safe. In fact, the only reason they make news is because they are so reliable and so infrequently have problems that when they do have a problem, it becomes big news.

So, what makes these engines so powerful? It is the way in which they generate their power or more correctly thrust. The aero engines work on the principle of gas turbines which continuously swallow large quantity of air, heat that air to temperatures that could easily melt the best steel around and then jets out that superheated air through the tail pipe at velocities that approach the speed of sound. There is of course a lot more that goes on under the hood, but that briefly is the essence of an airplane engine.

Now, let us come back to what the engines have to do with the Boeing Max Jet’s troubles. It has to do with the amount of fuel the engine burns. Clearly, we want to use as little gas as possible, both for the sake of environment but more importantly to keep the cost of flying low and affordable. It turns out the bigger the fans are the more efficient the turbines are and the less fuel the engines consume. Of course, there is a limit to which the fan size can be increased before it becomes counter- productive but we have to go a long way before that limit is reached.

On the Max Jets, what limited increasing the size of the fan was the physical room available below the wings where the engines were hung. Boeing came up with an ingenious solution – move the engine a little forward on the wing where there happened to be more room. So, that is what they did. But this created another problem – the nose of the airplane began to pitch upward under some flight conditions which was not good and could cause what is known as “stall” – a real no-no for flying machines as it could completely destroy lift that keeps the planes flying.

The MCAS was meant to automatically correct that problem when it sensed the airplane nose to be pitching up beyond its safe limits and prevent it from stalling. An excellent idea and I have no doubt the engineers at Boeing would eventually make it work. Hopefully that happens sooner rather than later and when the Max’s do begin to fly again, the flying public could once again board them, confident that they would safely get to their destination on an airplane that has those powerful and much more fuel efficient engines under their wings, working in harmony with the many systems that keep a modern airliner in the air…

Climate Change & You

Now, it does not really matter whether your politics is Red, Blue or Purple or whether you believe the whole climate change scare is a hoax, you cannot deny that in our own lifetime we are seeing bigger and more harsher swings in the climate. I remember growing up in India in the 1950s and 60s, we used to have Monsoon rains that could go on for a whole week. In fact, we had a saying that if it started to rain on a Saturday it would only stop the next Saturday. And more often than not, that old wives tale was true. Talking to my brother now, back home in New Delhi, it is rare if ever it rains for more than a day. I am sure I do not have to convince you that you have also experienced those same changes in your lifetime, whichever continent and country you grew up in.

There is not a day that goes by when you switch on the TV, the news frequently starts with a weather-related story. If it is not Australia burning claiming the lives of a billion animals – Koala Bears and Kangaroos and the likes, it is devastating floods in one part of the US and raging fire in other parts and Snow, Sleet and Ice in yet another. Each year, the summers seem to be hotter and longer and the winters not as cold and certainly much shorter. It is not my intention in this blog to throw data for average world temperature rise or the amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases or the melting of the polar ice caps or drought and parching earth in ever increasing areas of the planet. There is no denying that things are not the same as they were while we were growing up and we must do something about it before they become worse and perhaps beyond repair.

As a lifelong aviation engineer, I have been fortunate to have been given the opportunity to do my part in not only making air travel more affordable but also more environmentally friendly. All of my 30+ patents related to the engines that power today’s airliners were aimed at achieving that goal. I am also heartened to see that the Mantra of the 3R – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle has become part of our lives. More and more of us are also becoming conscious of our Carbon footprint and are trying to minimize it  by driving more fuel-efficient vehicles and using electricity generated from clean renewable sources such as solar and wind. But, clearly it is not enough, and the planet is still heating up. We need to keep up the fight and continue to do our part.

As a writer, I plan to do my part through my novels and blogs. I promise not to regurgitate what you may already know and what may seem like platitude and pontification. I am also not going to bore you with the science and probable root causes of these changes unless there is something new I can add from my vantage point as an aviation engineer. No, what I do want to talk about are areas which hitherto have been out of focus as related to climate change but do have significant impact on the planet and the quality of life of its inhabitants and what we as individuals and as a family unit can do about it. And believe me, there is a lot we can. You may already be doing some of these, but if you are not let me give you some food for thought.

The scourge of Plastics – Plastic, it seems has permeated so deeply in our daily lives that we don’t even think about the long-term harm it causes to our well- being. Plastic, you see is made from the same carbon-based fossil fuels we burn in our vehicles and which produce CO2 and other greenhouse gases that trap the heat within the earth’s atmosphere causing it to heat up. Whether it is the plastic grocery bags, the throw away straws and cutlery, the stretch plastic wrap we use to pack and store our food, those pesky and ubiquitous water bottles, all kind of shoes. I could go on, but you get the idea, plastic is everywhere.

Plastic as it turns out not only harms the environment as it is processed from fossil fuels but by also hanging around for a long time as it slowly decomposes. And in the meantime, it finds its way in our waterways where it gets pummeled into micro and nano size bits which are swallowed by marine life showing up in the seafoods we consume. It also reduces the rejuvenating capabilities of those waterways – lakes and oceans which help process some of that carbon emitted in its production. A real double whammy!

So, what can we do about it. Well, simply put, eliminate or at least reduce the use of plastics by whatever means that makes sense and is doable for your particular situation. I am not advocating some fanatical response, just common-sense actions such as using a non-disposable water bottle, skipping the use of those individual grocery bags to pack your apples and oranges, sip your choice of drink directly from the cup and get rid of those omnipresent straws. Again, you get the idea.

Water – Under Siege. Even in this land of abundance that is the United States, climate change is having a clearly observable and measurable impact on the availability of the elixir of life that is water. It takes a lot of energy to produce clean potable water which exacerbates the climate change reducing the amount of water coming down from the sky and from our mountains requiring even more energy to process the dwindling supply. The negative feedback loop just keeps churning adding to our woes. It is not an exaggeration to postulate that in the not too distant future, unless we individually and collectively act, availability of clean potable water may well become the biggest challenge we as humans face.

So, what to do about it? Quite simply – let us stop wasting it. When I was working, I will often see my colleagues running the water while brushing or shaving or rinsing their lunch boxes. Growing up in a country where water was scarce and rationed, it pained me at the sight of that waste, and I would politely ask them to turn the faucet off. Most of the time, I was thanked for reminding them but there were occasions when I was tersely asked to mind my own business. The rebuke hurt my ego, but it was well worth it.

This is just one example. Our daily lives are full of opportunities to reduce wastage without much sacrifice – running full instead of partial loads of laundry and dishwasher, taking shorter showers and less of those water guzzling baths. Again, you get the idea. Every drop of this precious commodity we save will help reduce creation of those climate damaging greenhouse gases and ensure this elixir of life is easily and readily available for the generations that follow us.

I am going to continue talking about climate change in some of my future blogs and will end this with one more food for thought. And that is about Food itself. You see, the production of food is a large contributor to climate change. And within the many food groups, consumption of meat is especially a major culprit requiring on average about thirteen times as much energy and resources such as land and water than a vegetarian diet. Now, I am not suggesting that we all become vegetarians but if we all just abstained from eating meat-based food for one day a week, it will have a measurable positive impact on our climate. The planet will be grateful for that and so will our own body!

Let me conclude by saying that even if you are not fully convinced and have reasonable doubts about the science and the overwhelming evidence it presents, we cannot question the fact that our climate is not the same as it was in the last decade or the decade before. We also cannot just devolve it to our governments or big businesses or public institutions to fight this global problem. It is incumbent upon each one of us to do our part and leave this beautiful blue terrestrial body that we call home in a clean and healthy condition for our children, grandchildren and the generations that come after them. They expect it of us, and we owe it to them…